1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electric-powered vehicle which travels using electric power stored in a battery as a power source.
2. Description of the Background Art
Widespread examples of an electric-powered vehicle which travels using electric power stored in a battery as a power source include an electric vehicle which travels using a motor as a driving source, and a hybrid vehicle which travels using both a motor and an engine as driving sources. Like motor vehicles each of which travels using only an engine as a driving source, electric-powered vehicles (hereinafter referred to simply as “vehicles” in some cases) can be considered to be stolen. It is hence desirable to prevent the vehicles from theft.
A person who steals vehicles (hereinafter referred to as a “thief” in some cases) aims at making free use of the vehicles as one's own after stealing the vehicles or at illegally selling the vehicles themselves or parts of the vehicles. In either case, the vehicle thief first drives a vehicle which he or she has stolen (hereinafter referred to as a “stolen vehicle” in some cases) to flee to a place relatively remote from the place where he or she has stolen the vehicle (hereinafter referred to as a “theft scene” in some cases) for the purpose of avoiding getting caught by the legitimate owner of the vehicle or the police.
A conceivable effective measure to prevent the theft of electric-powered vehicles is to limit the charging of a battery in the stolen vehicle. This decreases the value of the stolen vehicle and prevents the thief from fleeing to a place remote from the theft scene, to discourage the thief from stealing. A technique related to the prevention of the theft of electric-powered vehicles is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent No. 4967865.
A vehicle theft prevention apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4967865 includes a battery unit, a charging device, an authentication device, and a monitoring device. The battery unit includes a user information storage section for storing therein a user ID, for example, as user information about the user of a vehicle. The charging device includes a charging location information storage section for storing therein charging location information about charging locations in which the charging device is provided. The authentication device includes an authentication section for storing therein a database about a plurality of user IDs and the charging location information.
When a vehicle is connected to the charging device, the charging device receives the user ID from the battery unit mounted on the vehicle to send the received user ID with the charging location information through a network to the authentication device. The authentication device references the database to perform authentication between the user ID and the charging location information which are received from the charging device.
When the user ID and the charging location information are in a predetermined relationship, the authentication device judges that the authentication has been performed to send a charge enable signal to the charging device. When the user ID and the charging location information are not in the predetermined relationship, the authentication device judges that the authentication has not been performed to send a charge disable signal to the charging device. The charging device does not perform charging unless the charging device receives the charge enable signal from the authentication device.
If the vehicle is a stolen vehicle, the authentication is not performed because the user ID for the vehicle and the charging location information in the charging device are not in the predetermined relationship. Thus, the charge disable signal is provided to the charging device but the charge enable signal is not provided thereto, so that the charging is not performed. The vehicle theft prevention apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4967865 is capable of preventing the charging of the battery in a vehicle in the aforementioned manner in the case where the vehicle is stolen.
The aforementioned vehicle theft prevention apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4967865 has the problem of requiring enormous costs for the construction of facilities including the authentication device and the like. The aforementioned vehicle theft prevention apparatus has further problems to be described below. If the connection between the charging device and the authentication device through the network is broken due to a failure in the authentication device and the like, the charge enable signal is not provided from the authentication device to the charging device, so that the charging is not performed, even when the vehicle is not a stolen vehicle. Also, a charging facility which is not connected to the authentication device, e.g. a charging facility for home use, is able to freely charge the battery in a stolen vehicle, thereby failing to discourage the thief from stealing in the aforementioned manner. This results in a low degree of effectiveness of preventing the theft.